Hello Everyone,
How are you? Well, I hope. What's your weather like? Are you having a functional heat wave, like we are here in London, Ontario? All the snow melted away with some real downpours of rain. But the temperature is going back down again tomorrow.
Perhaps it's the too fast weather change that had me feeling really down. For once, I took my own advice and looked to City Farmer website (www.cityfarmer.info), where I found a wonderful video about the Martineau Gardens in Birmingham, England.
‘Gardens Where People Grow’ is a cheerful, positive 6 minute film that really lifted my spirits and I'm sure will lift yours!
This film focuses on Martineau Gardens near Birmingham, UK. It explores how community gardens benefit public health and increase resilience in a community, with particular focus on the impact of the garden and gardening on the mental health and well being of the people of Birmingham. Commissioned by the National Health Service Midlands and East (UK).
This is a must see!! http://www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/about-us/what-is-a-community-garden/
Director: John Hill-Daniel Camera: Carl Jorden, Peter Austin
Martineau Gardens website: http://www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/
I hope you enjoy the video! I'm going to browse the Martineau website now.
Very best regards to you!
Why's Woman
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Remember to keep an eye on City Farmer website
Hello everyone.
I hope you are bundling up
well during the cold weather we're having (if you are in Southwestern Ontario, I mean ... -18C for London overnight!). And if
you are cocooning inside, I hope you have lots of seed catalogues. I just received two from Vesey's out of PEI. The one is of
bulbs and plants - and has a gorgeous poppy on the front. I'm actually afraid to look inside it and be
tempted! I love poppies.
(In case you want a list of
good sources for seeds, check out the resources page of Community Gardens
London - www.communitygardenslondon.ca - where there is a list that includes a
place from most of the provinces. An
alter ego of mine maintains the website.)
I hadn't meant to start
talking about seeds. I was just looking
over the City Farmer website (www.cityfarmer.info) and was excited by the
variety of topics that turn up there: urban agriculture ideas and projects from
so many different places. The dozen or so articles
most recently posted (thursday evening) by the amazing Michael Levenston are:
Seeds of Change®, a U.S. seed company (heritage and organic focus) and maker
of nutritious organic foods just awarded twelve (12!) $10,000 grants to
community groups to carry out community based gardening or sustainable farming
projects. www.seedsofchange.com
There is a proposal in Detroit to by a group called RecoveryPark to turn a 3 acre
site into an urban agriculture [social enterprise] project to fund its
addiction treatment programs.
Cultivating Community, Harvesting Health – Community
Gardens to Urban Farms is the
positive title of The American Community Gardening Association's annual
conference to take place in Seattle
in August.
http://www.communitygarden.org/
A film about food in Austin,
Texas explores the idea of what it would be like if an
entire city could feed itself with healthy, local, organic food. A big dream and people are trying to make it
reality.
http://www.farmcitystate.com/donatepress.html
A beautifully illustrated
calendar - all vegetables! -
National Center for
Appropriate Technology, together the [U.S.] National
Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA) are calling for papers on
Innovations and Trends in Sustainable Urban Agriculture. There's going
to be a special issue on "Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems."
National Sustainable
Agriculture Infomormation Service: ATTRA - www.attra.org
National Centre for
Appropriate Technology: NCAT - www.ncat.org
Barry Thomas Becht and Binah
Godisall are a writer- artist team writing children's books in a series called
Seven Kind Kids. They've just done one
titled The Community Garden.
(I'm looking for their own website, so I don't put in a link to the Amazon conglomerate)
(I'm looking for their own website, so I don't put in a link to the Amazon conglomerate)
from Local Food supported by
the Big Lottery Fund. It will use it for its Islington Combined Harvest project
to try to produce high quality local produce for people in the area. The café
will host tastings and children will be invited to learn about food production
and agriculture.
Linked by Michael Levenston
The Canmore Community Garden in Alberta has plots for 100 gardens. There's a new video out (from Verge
Permaculture, I think) about the garden and one of its founders, Crystel
Vultier. Vultier also started the Farm
Box project which sources local and organic food right from the farmers and
distributes to 130 families weekly.
the video is right on City
Farmer: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/01/20/canmore-community-garden-in-alberta/
Information about Canmore Community Garden: http://canmorecommunitygardening.org/
At the Moritzplatz in Berlin, a busy roundabout in the centre of bustling
Kreuzberg, well over a thousand supporters have helped the site to grow “from
an ugly vacant lot to a paradise”. Over 500 different types of herbs and
vegetables are growing here.
Linked by Michael Levenston
St Werburghs City
Farm is 34 years old
Two popular lion-haired
rabbits have been returned to St Werburgh’s City Farm after they were stolen in
a New Year’s Eve break-in. Vandals damaged animal pens, CCTV units and security
lights at the Farm’s charity centre during the raid at 9.45pm. Following an appeal for information in The Post,
police say they received an anonymous tip off from the community. The rabbits
were then recovered from an address in Easton where the suspect was arrested.
The Badger Rock Middle School currently has 100 sixth and seventh-graders but will
expand to 150 students next year. Students learn in a state-of-the-art building
on Madison’s south side. The Center for Resilient Cities hosted
a grand opening celebration on Sept. 18, 2012.
Makers and Eaters
Unite: 100 farmers, 1 city
Fresh City is a city farm. We incubate farmers that change lives
by farming the city for a living. Heading into our third growing season we are
confident that our model is scalable. We want to expand our member farmer
program so that each neighborhood has a farm and a farmer. We are confident
that we can have 100 farmers growing 1,000,000 pounds of produce in Toronto within the next two years. But we need your help.
National Conference
“Enhancing Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture for sustainable livelihoods”
14-15 February, 2013
14-15 February, 2013
Planning for the
Business of Growing Food in BC’s Towns and Cities
Complete Report on-line. ...written
to help planners, engineers, and administrators ... to gain a better
understanding of the potential, pitfalls, and best practices for growing,
potentially raising, and selling food within town boundaries. Strategies and
approaches outlined in the Guidebook provide local governments with tools to
proactively plan for urban farming. This resource has been developed in
collaboration and consultation with urban farmers, municipal staff, academics,
and advocates.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
From Hope and Stephen Lewis, to Bill McKibben, to Willing Things to Not Happen
Hi everyone,
I hope you are all well.
Last week I listened to
Michael Enright in conversation with Stephen Lewis. They talked about a lot of things. After all,
it was not long after Lewis' 75th birthday and the two men have known each
other for over forty years. Stephen
Lewis' main work these days is with his foundation, which, since 2003, has
funded over 700 mostly women-run initiatives to support women and children
living with the effects of HIV/AIDS in African countries. Here in Canada, an incredible Grandmothers to Grandmothers network has
developed, in support of these projects.
The conversation turned to
environment issues and climate change.
Lewis said that he does expect that the world will have an environmental
crisis sometime between 2030 and 2050. He also talked about the difference
between optimism and hope. He said he is
not optimistic. However, he said he
maintains hope.
I've heard this sort of
comment before, and I always have trouble wrapping my mind around the
difference between optimism and hope.
"Optimism" seems to
be the word used when people are talking about making predictions based on the
concrete information available. In the case of climate change and the
possibility of major environment collapse, if we start looking at the climate
science, CO2 and methane levels, lack of environmental action at national and
international levels ... well, there's not a lot to be optimistic about.
"Hope" seems to be
a word that refers more to our internal, feeling mind. We see good people around us trying to make
the world a better place, and we have hope, because there are communities
of people in one area - and worldwide - who are trying. Hope is the spark that keeps us going. Hope is a word of personal connection.
Hope might just have a
meaning that takes it side by side to "Faith" which, leaving aside
any specifically religious meaning, I like to use as "believing in
something when common sense tells you not to" . This meaning is spoken by Fred Gailey in the
1947 film Miracle on 34th Street, written by Valentine Davies. (and if you ever
want to read the book version, I hope you find the 1984 version with Tomie de
Paola's perfect illustrations!)
Over the last week I was
thinking a lot about this hope-optimism-faith and today I listened to Bill
McKibben's talk to the October 2012 Council of Canadians annual general meeting
(there are about 8 talks on-line from this).
McKibben showed slides of people from all around the world who've done
something to bring awareness about the dangers of climate change - about levels
of CO2 above 350 parts per million - to their community and country. The 350.org website apparently has something
like 40,000 pictures from around the world on its Flicker account! Even the two dozen he showed - caring and
concerned faces from all 'round the world - were enough to have me in
tears. Sometimes there seems to be such
a chasm between what people want for themselves and their families, and the
relentless destructive march of the corporate.
And that's were my husband came
in, and I told him all the stuff I've written above. He said that he lives and thinks in two
versions of the world. There's a science
version, which fits with the gadget, fix-it, how-does-that-work guy he is. Then there's the magic realm, the Terry
Pratchett side. This is the side that
should be reality ... and oftentimes we just have to go ahead and do things as
if that's the one side there is.
It's on this magic side that
comes the willing things to not happen.
Not wishing that something will happen. Willing things to not happen. There is a stronger personal and
collaborative act involved in this willing things to not happen. And will
in this sense includes both the thinking about things and the doing. Setting mind and attention to all the ways in
which something destructive can be stopped, and setting physical self to making
sure something destructive is stopped. Using
will so something does not happen.
This is as far as I've
managed to get with this train of thought today.
I'll leave you with best
wishes, as always, and some websites to explore.
Why's Woman
Council of Canadians. Speech to Annual General Meeting by Bill
McKibben. October 2012.
Grandmothers to Grandmothers
Campaign.
Stephen Lewis
Foundation.
The Sunday Edition. Stephen Lewis interviewed by Michael
Enright. The Sunday Edition. January 6, 2013.
350.org Building a global movement to solve the
climate crisis. http://www.350.org
Friday, January 4, 2013
There are enough brilliant people on this earth to do everything that needs to be done
"There are enough brilliant people on this earth to do everything that
needs to be done".
Hello everyone,
I hope you are well.
I've just listened to Peter Sellars' lecture, Social Practice, for the Edible
Education course. http://edibleschoolyard.org/resource/edible-education-103-social-practice-peter-sellars
His wide-ranging talk answers the question of why an artist
and theatre person should come and lecture on food and food systems, and I
recommend listening to his entire talk.
He offers some light, to contrast with the darkness and
depressing things that will be explored in the series (and he gives examples of
some serious issues). He assures those
in the class or listening to the tape that through sharing what we do, and by being
mindful of the sentience of ... well, everything ... that we have power. We can act in ways that are apart from the
belittling, industrial system that has developed, and that he says is
collapsing like a defeated dragon (slowly and with a lot of noise and display).
Sellars points out that we are here now to prepare for what
comes next. We have an opportunity to be
ready, and an obligation to others to do what we can (because we are all
connected).
I appreciate his bravery in using the word "evil"
to describe the behaviours of big corporations ... and his assertion that evil
is not sustainable. Evil always fails.
He states that food justice is important because food is mind and that every child has a right
to healthy, organic food; it is not an option.
With conviction and enthusiasm his talk combines spiritual
philosophy from several traditions with practicality, something I've been trying
to do for a long time ... not always successfully, clearly or without the
trying adding its own stress. I
appreciate his reassurance to start small, and with other people.
He mentions the 4 imeasurables of Buddhism: love,
compassion, right effort and courage.
He reminds that "democracy" is not static.
He notes that Indigenous peoples recognize that everything
is alive: human, animal, plants, water, rock.
He quotes from the Indian Upanishads (and I may be mixing
its text with his own words):
... the finest quality of the food we swallow
rises up as mind.
The finest quality of the water
that we swallow rises up as life itself.
The finest quality of the light
we swallow rises up as speeech.
We are beings of light.
The more light you take in the
more powerfully and beautifully you speak.
Food and sharing food is central over cultures. Growing food small scale is going to be
essential and a saving grace on the path forward.
There's a lot in this talk.
The older you are and the more you've been to workshops that combine
spirit and practical, or the more you've tried to reconcile the diverse aspects
of your complicated life, the more you'll sit -head in hands - nodding. You'll think.
And that's important.
I hope you'll listen through. It's a good start for the New Year.
Best regards, as always.
Why's Woman
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